Posts for: News Story

Campus Philly’s research points to a link between internships and talent retention. According to a 2010 Campus Philly survey of 4,600 undergraduates, graduates and alumni, 70 percent of alumni who stayed in Philly for a year or more after graduation had a summer internship in Greater Philadelphia.

The answer to Philadelphia’s brain drain problem didn’t seem so complicated at Bliss on Broad Street, where Mayor Michael Nutter had lunch with eight students who were interning at local tech companies through a program funded by the Nutter administration’s StartupPHL program.

“What would make you leave Philadelphia?” asked Rob Weber, cofounder of AgileSwitch, one of the companies hosting the interns.

After a brief pause, the whole table — students from Penn, Haverford, Temple and Penn State — agreed: “If I couldn’t find a job.”

Ten startups, four months of mentorship and seven minutes to make their case.

Those were the numbers behind demo day at DreamIt Health—the region’s first-ever accelerator program for new companies trying to improve the health care system via personal technology.

Novel ideas: It was a standing-room-only crowd of 300-plus at WXPN’s World Cafe Live in University City. About half of those in attendance came with checkbooks in tow, mostly East Coast investors watching the stage in hopes of spotting the next big thing…

NorthPoint, the New York-based enterprise software company that specializes in the financial and digital sector, opened a Center City office last month in One Liberty.

To start, the office, which is the company’s third after Boston, will be a one-woman band. Debra Loggia (@debloggia) will be running the expansion with her sales and healthcare background. As she told Technically Philly recently on a breezy afternoon in University City earlier this month, she was most recently leading digital marketing at Thomas Jefferson Hospital, where she also had done her masters work in health policy.

That background may be one of her best assets for NorthPoint, which is widening its reach and the pharma, life sciences, hospital and other medical businesses that dot this region are in strong alignment.

Just 3 percent of tech startups are launched by women. That stat motivates TechGirlz, a Philadelphia-based nonprofit that aims to upend current statistics by getting a really early start. That’s why 19 girls, ages 11 to 15, spent last week in a tech entrepreneurship “boot camp.” “At the end of the day, what we are trying to show them is the possibilities of what they can do,” said TechGirlz founder Tracey Welson-Rossman.

It was the second time that Nutter has celebrated a new startup office in less than a month, cutting the ribbon at Artisan Mobile’s new Old City office in late June. It’s a sign of the times — and Nutter’s priorities — that he’s throwing his weight behind startups that are still early-stage, with a few dozen employees, instead of only applauding big name tech companies that have moved to the city, like Fiberlink, Bentley Systems and First Round Capital.

Mayor Michael Nutter celebrated Curalate‘s new Center City office at a ribbon cutting yesterday. Growing from three employees last summer to 21, the visual analytics firm had outgrown its office space at First Round Capital‘s University City headquarters. At the ribbon cutting, Curalate CEO Apu Gupta said his company’s growth was a sign that Philadelphia can be a place for tech companies to thrive. “Great opportunities don’t need to be found in the Valley, or the Alley,” Gupta said. “They can be found right on the banks of the Schuylkill,” referring to his new office that lines the river at 24th and Walnut Streets.

Curalate celebrated its move to a new Center City location Thursday with a visit from Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter.

“Curalate’s growth is yet another sign that Philadelphia is increasingly becoming a hub for fast-growing technology companies and a place for entrepreneurs to start and grow their businesses,” Nutter said in a statement released by his office.

Situated in a historic building, a once-suburban startup is now based along a Northwest Philadelphia business corridor.

Earlier this month, BuLogics, Inc. announced that they have departed their Malvern headquarters and have set up shop at the prominent Mason Building, located at the intersection of Ridge and Midvale avenues in East Falls.

Founded in 2003, BuLogics is a wireless embedded software engineering firm that has completed numerous national projects, and recently adopted a new focus on energy management tools for apartment buildings and other multiple dwelling units. Among their local projects was a $175,000 award from the city in 2010 to install its energy control systems at the Philadelphia Navy Yard and the Inn at Penn, according to the company’s website.

If tax credits that helped bring Batman and Jack Reacher to Pennsylvania breathed life into the state’s film industry, a similar measure included in the new 2013-14 budget could save the day for early-stage tech investments.

The Innovate in PA Tax Credit was officially signed into the tax code Sunday and will be activated once the 2013-14 budget makes it through all the necessary channels.

The credit boosts funding to Ben Franklin Technology Partners, the state-sponsored initiative that funds regional technology accelerators. It is based in Harrisburg, with Philadelphia in the southeastern regional branch, one of four…

Mobile software provider, Artisan, was just slipped a few bills from 5-year-old VC firm FirstMark Capital. The $5.5 million investment is a reaffirmation of FirstMark’s confidence in the Philadelphia-based firm, which it funded to the tune of $1.5 million last year.

FirstMark’s previous investments include Pinterest, SecondMarket, NewsCred and TapAd. The VC had also led a $4 million funding round in 2008 for Boomi, the platform-as-a-service company headed by current Artisan CEO Bob Moul. Boomi went on to be acquired by Dell in 2010.

The percentage of Wharton MBAs starting their own businesses at graduation has nearly tripled in five years, and the number of students working summer internships with startups is up nearly 15 percent since last year, the school says.

So far this year, 7.4 percent of Wharton’s 2013 graduating class are starting their own companies, up from 6.1 percent last year and 2.6 percent in 2008. The number of first-year students working internships with startups has hit 70, up from 61 last year.